Do B/Xers have a beef with 1E?

[Wheggi]

Basic came in a box, like Candyland and Chutes and Ladders. AD&D was presented in hardback volumes with big words and small print. I don't remember if there was nudity in Basic; AD&D has titties galore, a little bush too.

Is there any doubt which of these games was the real deal?

- Wheggi

[Stonegiant]

Hey now OD&D came in a box and it has allot of boobies as well Sometimes you just want to snatch a box of the wall and play with it

[Wheggi]

Bring on the double entendre!

- Wheggi

[Benoist]

Hey now OD&D came in a box and it has allot of boobies as well Sometimes you just want to snatch a box of the wall and play with it

HAHA!

[T. Foster]

The thing is, D&D was always (well, at least after about 1977) primarily played by kids aged about 11-16. They're the audience that allowed the game to grow from a tiny niche thing played by a few thousand people primarily in the American upper midwest to a genuine cultural phenomenon played by millions all over the world. Even today if you look at the age stats at someplace like ENWorld or RPGNet you'll see that a large majority of the people there started playing D&D between 1979-85 and were aged 11-16 at that time (and are thus now in their late 30s-mid 40s).

But the thing is, for AD&D it was sort of kept a secret -- the books looked and felt like they were targeted towards adults and, as a kid reading them, you imagined that this was a game mostly played by adults (or at least high-school to college age kids) and that you were special and precocious for being able to understand and play it at age 11 or whatever. Therefore AD&D seemed cool. The Basic Sets, OTOH, at least the Moldvay and Mentzer versions, felt like they were targeted to kids -- the Moldvay set to kids about age 12, the Mentzer set to kids about age 10 -- including bigger print, smaller words, more family-friendly art, mildly bowdlerized content (no "evil" alignment, no demons, no named deities, etc.). And while this made them a lot easier to understand, it also made them a lot less cool. Yeah, everybody had started with those sets and learned the rules from them (to the extent of still following most of those rules even after they switched over) but it wasn't something you really talked about because everyone knew Basic D&D was the kiddie game and AD&D was the real, adult game. Somebody who showed up to a game with a Basic Set in hand would probably be made fun of, and almost certainly told they needed to "move up to the big leagues" of AD&D.

And presumably there were some kids (I didn't know any personally at the time, but I'm willing to posit they existed) who decided they wanted to stick with the Basic game not because they couldn't handle AD&D or their parents wouldn't let them get those books (though there were some of those too) but because they honestly preferred it -- its smoother and simpler and more straightforwardly-explained system, its less pulpy and cramped flavor, the absence of so much "Gygaxiness" -- and those kids hated that all the other kids looked down on them and their game of choice and called it the kiddie version and acted like they weren't good or smart enough for AD&D, and it seems that at least some of those kids are still holding that grudge.

[Wheggi]

But the thing is, for AD&D it was sort of kept a secret -- the books looked and felt like they were targeted towards adults and, as a kid reading them, you imagined that this was a game mostly played by adults (or at least high-school to college age kids) and that you were special and precocious for being able to understand and play it at age 11 or whatever. Therefore AD&D seemed cool.

This was my experience. Basic was for the layman, the introductory game that you received from your grandma at Christmas. AD&D however was the game of big brothers: high school and college guys who smoked dope, drove cars, had Playboy centerfolds and blacklight posters on their walls, listened to less-than-mainstream music (such as heavy metal, electronica and progressive rock) and watched cult classic movies like Eraserhead, MP&tHG, A Clockwork Orange and Pink Floyd's The Wall. As a boy just entering my teens this was the alien shore, a strange and wonderful destination with a compass heading completely opposite of childhood. Completely opposite of the children's toys that you'd get from Nanna.

- Wheggi

[francisca]

<snipped bunch of stuff that is true, and I've seen in many cases>

I never had any sort of persecution complex about liking B/X. It probably has a lot do with with the fact that the few times I got told, "put down the kiddie D&D and play manly AD&D" I just rolled my eyes and laughed it off. I mean really? Some 14 year old alpha-dork is going to tell me I'll be more manly if I play the game with the Succubus? That, and I did play AD&D as well, I just never felt the need to cast off the Moldvay boxed set as some sort of right of passage, on my way to the He-Man AD&D Club (HMADDC - Maybe we'll give Wheggi the custom title of "HMADDC President".... with Axe as Minister of Defense )

I like both games, a lot, as well as OD&D (which B/X resembles much more than AD&D, from a rules/mechanic aspect, though clearly not in tone of wordsmithing.)

I'm happy to play or DM any of the three.

[AxeMental]

(back then it was a badge of honor to master the DMG, it meant you were smarter then everyone else, and definitely better then the guys playing "kiddie D&D)

... among the kiddies, that is. Actual grownups don't worry about that.

Comes a time in everyone's life when it's time to put childish games behind.

1E AD&D quickly became the "it" game. If you wanted to play with different groups, or hell keep the attention of your own players (drawn no doubt by the buzz and nice big books) you had to make the transition. I don't recall anyone bragging they played 0E or B/X, I think they wouldn't enter that contest with 1E.

[Falconer]

Hey now OD&D came in a box and it has allot of boobies as well Sometimes you just want to snatch a box of the wall and play with it

Niiiiice!

[James Maliszewski]

But the thing is, for AD&D it was sort of kept a secret -- the books looked and felt like they were targeted towards adults and, as a kid reading them, you imagined that this was a game mostly played by adults (or at least high-school to college age kids) and that you were special and precocious for being able to understand and play it at age 11 or whatever. Therefore AD&D seemed cool. The Basic Sets, OTOH, at least the Moldvay and Mentzer versions, felt like they were targeted to kids -- the Moldvay set to kids about age 12, the Mentzer set to kids about age 10 -- including bigger print, smaller words, more family-friendly art, mildly bowdlerized content (no "evil" alignment, no demons, no named deities, etc.). And while this made them a lot easier to understand, it also made them a lot less cool. Yeah, everybody had started with those sets and learned the rules from them (to the extent of still following most of those rules even after they switched over) but it wasn't something you really talked about because everyone knew Basic D&D was the kiddie game and AD&D was the real, adult game. Somebody who showed up to a game with a Basic Set in hand would probably be made fun of, and almost certainly told they needed to "move up to the big leagues" of AD&D.

FWIW, this mostly mirrors my own experience. I began with the Holmes set in late '79 and my friends and I used the Blue Book, supplemented by the MM and PHB, for our adventures and campaigns. And while some of my younger friends did get the Moldvay/Cook/Marsh set(s) when they later came out (usually as birthday and Christmas gifts) and we often did use elements of those rules (initiative, for example), I can't recall our thinking that we were anything but AD&D players, because that's what the MM and PHB said on their covers and even the Holmes rulebook claimed (misleadingly, in my opinion, but that's another matter) to be an introduction to AD&D.

I can't recall ever encountering anyone back then who held up B/X as "better" than AD&D or a replacement for it. Mostly, B/X was a cheaper, simpler and more readily available entry point into the game, but was generally set aside as you delved deeper into things. I can't say the same about the Mentzer sets, though, whose partisans I first remember encountering around the time the Companion Rules came out. A lot of these guys had real chips on their shoulders vis à vis AD&D and held up their game as "better," "clearer," "more complete" and "more fun." On some level, I can't blame them for this attitude, since, by the time the Companion Rules came out, it was clear that Mentzer's rules were being set up as alternatives to AD&D rather than as a parallel, cross-pollinating line. And say what you want about the presentation of Moldvay/Marsh/Cook compared to AD&D, but, by my lights anyway, it wasn't until Mentzer that we saw a thorough "kiddification" of D&D.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that I suspect the vast majority of the "B/Xers" who have a beef with 1e are in fact Mentzer fans. It's Mentzer's sets that TSR tried to present as a "closed system" that gave you "everything you need" to play from levels 1 to 36 without the need to ever go looking at that AD&D stuff. I think these are the guys you're running into with this attitude, not fans of Moldvay/Cook/Marsh -- at least that's my personal experience. Take it for what it's worth.

[AxeMental]

Q: "B/X was a cheaper, simpler and more readily available entry point into the game"

Another important point. The 1E 3 book set was a very expensive investment for kids back then (even though most only had the PH). Hell, I never saw 3/4 of the modules until they showed up in used bookstores in the early 90s.

[T. Foster]

Yeah, $12 each for the PH and MM and $15 for the DMG was serious frickin' money for a 10-year-old kid earning $1-2 a week in allowance, which is why the Expert rulebook -- which was available stand-alone book for $5.50 and worked with the Basic Set you'd already gotten as an Xmas present from Nanna -- looked like an attractive option. That or a paper route (or shoplifting...).

I remember making that mental calculation and deciding to stick to D&D for that reason (plus the intro to my Mentzer Basic Set told me that it was the "real, original" game and AD&D was some other game that I shouldn't bother with), but that resolution only lasted a couple months (until a friend starting showing off his brother's AD&D modules which seemed so much cooler than my D&D modules, and I actually looked through the AD&D PH at the Waldenbooks in our local mall and had my mind blown by how much more awesome stuff it contained). It took me months of saving to buy those books (and would have taken even longer except that I ended up buying my DMG second-hand for probably $10 instead of $15) but of course once I had them I never looked back (and totally looked down on all the other kids who didn't have them ).

[Ghul]

It's kind of funny, because I distinctly remember turning my nose up at "kiddie D&D" (i.e. B/X) after I moved to full AD&D by c. 1982. Before that, it had been Holmes + DMs Guide for quite a while. Around 1984 some kids in the apartment buildings near my house invited me to play D&D with them, as they knew I was a DM. When I found out they were playing the "little kid's version" in the "red box" I refused to play, because I thought it was stupid, and that they were disgustingly inferior to me. Truth is, I was a D&D snob before I even kissed a girl. I tend to be a little more open-minded these days.

[Wheggi]

Truth is, I was a D&D snob before I even kissed a girl. I tend to be a little more open-minded these days.

Isn't there a theorem that states that the level of D&D snobiness one has directly correlates with the length of time before one kisses a girl? I'm sure I read that somewhere . . .

And just for the record, Nanna bought me D&DG for my birthday. She was down like that.

- Wheggi

[T. Foster]

Another factor: some of those kids who did start out with the B/X sets, played them for a few months and then switched over to AD&D may, looking back with 25 years' hindsight, feel that switching over was a mistake because AD&D, especially in the era 1984 and after, was so much more of a money-drain (multiple hardback rulebooks, tons of modules and supplements, plus minis, novels and calendars, etc.), led to more of a groupthink do-what-everyone-else-is-doing-not-what-you-would-do-on-your-own approach (exemplified by the RPGA and Dragon magazine) and, of course, was mostly shit (all shit from 1986 on). So, to those people "AD&D" carries a lot of baggage and a lot of blame for things gone wrong and time and money mis-spent and B/X by contrast stands out as something more pure and innocent -- with memories of those first few blissful months before you got sucked onto the product treadmill and into the RPGA/Dragon groupthink scene -- more what the game should have been -- "if I had it to do over I'd have just stuck with this version and never fallen for the AD&D line." Which is pretty much pure emotional nostalgia and grass-is-greener revisionism, but what can you do?